If KSP 2 gets Early Access, how should they do it?

[GoldForest]

I've seen talk about Early Access mentioned a time or two on the forum, and I was wondering how they would do it if they're release date is rumored to be March. Will they give us access in February? Or even March? 

And how would they go about distributing the Early Access? Would they just do it like any other Steam game and just allow you to buy it with the stereotypical warning about early access? Would it just be content creators? Would they setup a website and distribute a limited number of steam keys?

What are your thoughts and opinions on KSP 2 and the idea of Early Access? 

Edited August 31, 2019 by GoldForest

[Guest]

Community input is vital for that kind of game. Thus an early access should be open to everyone, and they should actually listen to people, not only in terms to bug reports, but also in terms of design decisions. It was the community, not Squad, that made KSP1 what it is.

[GoldForest]

1 minute ago, Dragon01 said:

Community input is vital for that kind of game. Thus an early access should be open to everyone, and they should actually listen to people, not only in terms to bug reports, but also in terms of design decisions. It was the community, not Squad, that made KSP1 what it is.

While I agree with this, I do feel that opening it up to everyone might be a little overwhelming to Star Theory. KSP is easily well over 2 to 5 million strong, listening to 5 million voices would be hard. 

[Guest]

Early access should be for those dedicated to KSP. Only a small part of the community will participate, but this is the part you want. Limiting this to modders specifically is pointless, as is admitting only an arbitrary number of people (you have no guarantee you're not missing an important modder, or a YouTuber that was on vacation at the time, for instance). I would say, "unlimited in number, but make the registration require effort." Price should be lower at that point, but it should only be available through a store on a website, so that it won't be found by random Steam users looking for deals. If it was only announced on this forum, as opposed to social media, I believe it would cut the numbers down to manageable levels, while letting in all modders, notable YouTubers and KSP old timers.

[GoldForest]

6 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Early access should be for those dedicated to KSP. Only a small part of the community will participate, but this is the part you want. Limiting this to modders specifically is pointless, as is admitting only an arbitrary number of people (you have no guarantee you're not missing an important modder, or a YouTuber that was on vacation at the time, for instance). I would say, "unlimited in number, but make the registration require effort." Price should be lower at that point, but it should only be available through a store on a website, so that it won't be found by random Steam users looking for deals. If it was only announced on this forum, as opposed to social media, I believe it would cut the numbers down to manageable levels, while letting in all modders, notable YouTubers and KSP old timers.

So the whitelisted website idea, but with unlimited steam keys? 

[Guest]

Something like that. I guess Steam is kind of inevitable, but payment shouldn't go through it, at least.

[Nuke]

id prefer to use a stand alone download server if at all possible. steam and its ilk are unnecessary bloat in my book. 

[Guest]

So would I, but the devs tend to be all "OMG Workshop!", "OMG Trading Cards!", "OMG Achievements!", "OMG Forum We Don't Have To Run!". Squad would have probably loved to make KSP1 Steam-only, but the option to convert KSP Store purchases to Steam wasn't as popular as they probably hoped (go figure...).

[Superfluous J]

I do not think they should do Early Access.

However, if they decide to, it should be done as early as possible and the access should be to everybody who wants to buy it in its incomplete state.

I was not able to accurately represent this opinion in the above poll, so I chose the final option of the 2nd part.

[GoldForest]

27 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I do not think they should do Early Access.

However, if they decide to, it should be done as early as possible and the access should be to everybody who wants to buy it in its incomplete state.

I was not able to accurately represent this opinion in the above poll, so I chose the final option of the 2nd part.

Sorry, didn't think to put an option for as early as possible. The poll has been updated. 

[Xurkitree]

I think the SQUAD devs are in contact with important players and modders over discord. Star Theory could use that to contact people to hand out early access.